Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is that they all perform as just one single unit where your information is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all drives is the same at all times, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Cloud Web Hosting
Our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are generated uses quick SSD drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disk drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that not a single thing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your data along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The SSD drives that are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data copied on such a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the problematic drive won't have an impact on the normal operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.